Sydney – Papuan rights and independence activists said on Monday they believed the Indonesian military could be to blame for a weekend attack that killed three people, including two Americans, near the world's biggest gold and copper mine.
The Papuans rejected accusations from Jakarta that the guerrilla Free Papua Organisation (OPM) was behind the ambush of a convoy carrying American teachers in the troubled province, where a low level guerrilla conflict has waged for decades.
"All of the people in West Papua are committed, in the town, in the jungle, on the OPM side. We'd already decided to work hard for a peaceful area in West Papua," said Agus Alua, second secretary general of the Papua Presidium Council – the political wing of the secessionist movement.
"So this thing has come not from West Papua but from outside," Alua told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Sydney on the Papuan peace movement.
Indonesian officials have blamed the attack on the rebels, saying it suited the OPM to destroy the confidence of international investors in Indonesia's security environment.
On Sunday, Indonesian troops combing the jungle for the assailants exchanged shots with an armed band, killing one of its members. He appeared to be an indigenous Papuan.
But John Rumbiak, a respected human rights campaigner who has been active around the US-owned mine for years, was sceptical.
"This is the tradition of the military in Indonesia as a whole but specifically in Papua, to orchestrate this kind of attack and scapegoat the OPM," said Rumbiak, supervisor of Papua's Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy.
Rumbiak, also speaking to Reuters in Sydney at the conference, said he believed the Indonesian military could have had three motives for the attack.
The first would have been to remind the US owners of the mine, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc, that they needed the protection of the battalion of Indonesian soldiers which guards it, and who have been accused of human rights violations.
The second motive would be to undermine the credibility of the political independence movement in Papua.
The third would be to convince Washington of the dangers posed by the secessionist rebels in order to speed up negotiations on resuming military ties with Jakarta, which were broken after Indonesia-backed militias ran riot in East Timor.
Alua said the incident provided the Indonesian military with an excuse to launch an operation against not just independence fighters in the OPM but also the Papuan political movement.
He said that if Papuans were involved, then they had likely been recruited into military-sponsored militia similar to the officially sanctioned gangs that killed hundreds in East Timor after it voted for independence from Indonesia.
Rumbiak said he had met the rebel leader named as their chief suspect by security officials, OPM fighter Kelly Kwalik, on August 25.
He said Kwalik had told him he was renouncing violence because he and other guerrilla leaders had come to realise they were also responsible for keeping "the cycle of conflict" going in Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya.
"Kelly Kwalik said, well you know, this is the time, this is the time for moving towards a peaceful movement," Rumbiak said. "I absolutely doubt he is responsible."